Posts tagged: bamboo fly rods

The L&T and the kids were elsewhere, so with two hours to spare on a Sunday afternoon, I ended up at Chris Raine’s fly rod shop, handling an 8′ 7wt rod he built to fish bushy October Caddis and stonefly dries.

Raine’s been a tear lately — the family business is closed until March, so he’s been turning out bamboo fly rods like it was easy.

For the record, bamboo fly rods are not easy, but when performing a series of painstakingly precise, highly repetitive tasks, it’s clearly possible to work up a good head of steam.

His goal was to fill his outstanding orders and stock the “impulse” rack (some folks actually have the money to buy a cane rod on impulse).

Because he’s a fisherman, he also wanted to build something for himself.

Which is where it gets interesting.

Raine builds gorgeous fly rods in a market where many buyers let a magnifying glass determine a rod’s worth — sometimes before they’ve even cast it.

The vast majority of his sales are the longer, lighter fly rods that respond well to hollowbuilding (like his 8′ 4wt and new 8’3″ 5wt).

But in his “off” hours, he crafted a rod using stained cane, chrome guides, a scratched reel seat and a ferrule manufactured in 1998.

He also built it on an experimental taper that has little or no commercial value, and in a line weight more common to a modern bonefish rod.

Yet the rod’s no throwaway; it weighs a featherish 3.5 ounces, casts beautifully, bosses big flies smartly and still bends enough that you’ll feel — as Wayne Eng puts it — the “heartbeats” of even an average trout.

See, I said it was getting interesting.

When your goal is to slap a bulky, wind-resistant October Caddis dry into a one-inch seam, accuracy matters. At least it feels that way when you miss. Today’s fisherman is likely to replace line mass with line speed, casting big dries with lighter line weights. That works at longer ranges, but at short ranges, the bushy flies open up the loops.

Which is where the 7wt suddenly starts to make sense.

So while a builder’s unlikely to sell a relatively full-flexing 8′ 7wt, a fisherman who lives on a good October Caddis river and understands physics might want to fish one.

This is why I like hanging with bamboo rod builders; they’re an iconoclastic bunch prone to tinkering, and you never know what’s going to emerge from the dark recesses of their shops.

They’re like evil geniuses, but instead of the apocalypse, they produce obsolete fly rods the market doesn’t want, but fishermen should probably embrace.

The Orvisnews.com blog ran a short piece about testing fly rods at the Orvis rod factory (I would have killed for a quick peek at one of the “Rod Action Charts” seen only at a distance), and it reminded me of those rod testing sessions you hold with your friends.

When a couple of your fly fishing buddies are bamboo rod builders, you get to test a fair number of new fly rod tapers, and while you think casting a new rod would be straightforward, at times the it can feel more like a first date than a scientific process.

You don’t want to be swayed by the electricity of the moment, yet acting like a sour dullard won’t get you anywhere either. Things tend to be a little tentative at first, and while those first moments seem momentous, they’re generally far less critical than they seem at the time (thought it’s true you only get one first impression).

I have to admit that my casting isn’t all it could be, so while some rods really sing on the grass, they don’t cut it for me on the river.

The famous Paul Young style semi-parabolic rods are a good example; on the lawn I’m a god with the things, but on the river—where you’re staring down the barrel of difficult drifts, a little wind and the pressure applied by rising fish—things tend to go off the rails a little.

It turns out semi-parabolics respond poorly to being pushed, which is precisely what I do when trout are rising and I’m not connecting.

You might consider my lack of self-improvement (in the casting department) a personality flaw, but I prefer to think that simply recognizing it is evidence of a heightened sense of self-awareness.

That way I can congratulate myself and move on.

Bamboo rod gatherings are basically mega versions of the small, friends-only event; you get a lot of guys and fly rods together in one place and cast rods you’d never seen built by makers you never heard of.

It sounds wonderful and it is—right up to the moment you walk away with a “must-buy” list five rods long, and even before you’re done doing those financial calculations in your head, you know there’s disappointment waiting in your future.

Naturally, some rods disappoint you right away; others impress in a way that convinces you it’s time to sell pints of blood before the second backcast even straightens out.

Most fall somewhere in between, and some rods you don’t warm up to for quite some time. Others perform wonderfully on the casting range yet fail in actual practice, and as I noted above, that can probably be laid at the caster’s door.

Plus, you can’t overlook the conditions; when the wind is whistling down the Upper Sacramento River canyon, it tends to blow pretty hard across the face of Raine’s rod shop, yet if you’re standing on the side and casting towards the back (it’s usually warmer there), your untouched-by-the-wind forward casts unroll beautifully while your backcasts hook to the right and feel awful to your hand.

Casting a sweet lightline rod in the wind is also a prescription for disappointment, and in fact, I first fished an 8′ 4wt Orvis Superfine Touch graphite rod on the full-sized Upper Sacramento River during a windy day, and if that’s the only chance it got, you’d have to conclude it was a marginally useful rod.

Since then it’s been fished (by myself and others) on a couple of small streams, where it shines brightly indeed.

In other words, better check the wind before you decide to hate on a rod.

Once I fished with a guy in Tennessee who insisted the Phillipson he borrowed from me lacked the power to turn over the fly, and I finally got tired of listening to the complaints and watched him for a while before realizing his leader was a massive piece of overlong shit, and wouldn’t turn over a fly made of anti-matter, much less a bushy #10 Catskill dry.

At lunch I cut it back by a good six feet and re-tied it with a fairly rapid taper, and suddenly the rod was, you know, “fishing great.”

OK, Heavy Handed Moral #2: learn to tie a decent leader.

In any case, testing a fly rod offers one sizable advantage over dating; if you wake up with something and you’re suddenly unsure of your commitment to the relationship, you can sell a fly rod.

First, because I selflessly work my fingers to the bone for the Undergrounders — expecting little in return save the occasional bowl of gruel — it’s pretty clear I’ll be headed skyward when the earth starts belching fire and clouds of stinging asps bearing the face of Donald Trump emerge and go all medieval on the poor schlubs left behind.

It’s equally clear that most of the unappreciative Undergrounders — who never truly recognized my genius and are about to pay dearly for the oversight — will be among the poor schlubs, and it seems only fair to say the following:

Neener. Neener.

You see, not only am I going to a better place (apparently the hot water never runs out), I’ll be headed there with a fly rod in my hand.

Longtime bamboo buddy Dave Roberts and I have been absent from each other’s fishing calendar for far too long, and if the Rogue River’s barely fishable flows hold up, I’ll be cruising north and fishing the just-underway Upper Rogue stonefly hatch for steelhead.

The last time we did this, a great, big, ginormous steelhead ate the big stonefly dry right in front of me, and because I’m a cool, steely eyed fly fishing sonofabitch (“I shot a man in Dunsmuir once just to watch him die”), I set on him like I was trying to club myself with the fly rod, immediately snapping the 3x tippet before… actually clubbing myself with the fly rod.

Dad would have been so proud.

And yes, the Rogue’s flows are unstable enough that there is a Plan B.

A secret Plan B.

The Gear Rapture

Dave Roberts and I met long before I moved to Dunsmuir, sharing an affinity for dry flies, small streams, colorful trout and bamboo fly rods.

We’ve been fast friends ever since, even to the point of Dave being the best man at my wedding (I needed a steady, calm, bamboo-style guy marshaling the flask of Irish Whiskey which kept me from soiling myself on The Happiest Day of My Life).

Over time, our paths have diverged; I’m pretty set for bamboo fly rods while Dave probably qualifies for some kind of intervention.

I’ll bring a strong 6wt fly rod and nymph if needed, but because it’s Dave, I’m also bringing my 8’6″ James Beasley-built Payne Canadian Canoe rod, which is a nice 7wt at stonefly ranges.

And just in case we end up on the highly technical Holy Water, I’ll pack a nice bamboo 5wt (haven’t decided which yet).

If I’m taken in the rapture, I want to be taken while in possession of a couple nice fly rods.

But let’s just assume the second time’s the charm. After all, even Donald Trump needed a couple of tries to become a complete douchebag.

So you’re fishing Saturday, and you’ve got Friday off for travel (if needed).

Where do you go — within a reasonable day’s travel — to fly fish before the cracks open up and the Cloven Hooved Deceiver himself steps out of the ground? (When he does, he’ll be holding a Nestle product and singing that damned “Friday” song.)

For The Loved Ones Left Behind

Following in the footsteps of the wiley-but-going-to-hell entrepreneur who created a post-rapture pet care service, I’m announcing the Underground’s ‘Left Behind But Not Forgotten’ Bamboo Fly Rod Storage Service.

The bamboo fly rod truly is a marvel of engineering – its six-sided construction (or four-sided in the case of a quad) offers strength, exceptional resistance to crushing, and good resistance to twisting.

That’s why I wasn’t wholly surprised to stumble across the Colt Rod Company and its “revolutionary” technology:

I guess "An idea we stole from rods over 100 years old" just didn't sing...

I don’t know who Colt Rods are; I’ve never seen one in person, and while they’re currently selling conventional rods, they haven’t yet brought their fly rods to market. (When they do, we’d be happy to receive a dozen or so in a plain, unmarked package for revenue enhancement testing purposes.)

Still, I can’t help but smile a bit at the labeling of better than century-old technology six-sided construction as “Revolutionary.”

You could argue that Colt’s “I-beam” technology was different from bamboo’s solid structure, but I’d also suggest that the work of cutting edge bamboo hollowbuilders like Wayne Maca, Per Brandin, Thramer, Reams and Raine offers some striking similarities.

In any case, I frankly think Colt’s rods look interesting – maybe even cool, though again, you’d expect someone like me to think that. (It’s possible I have a taste for the different when it comes to fly fishing tackle.)

They might actually have something here (I've been arguing for hollowbuilt bamboo rods for years)

You’d have to figure they’d be heavier than regular cylindrical graphite rods, but then, I’ve always thought weight was more important to marketers than fishermen (being a bamboo/fiberglass guy, I would think that).

From the outside, they look a lot like the old Hexagraph rods, but those were carbon strips laminated atop foam – essentially a solid-built construction.

After being finished, the rods then go through a final step where the new owner’s information is electronically loaded on to the visible RFID chip located above the handle of the rod.

I get the feeling these rods won’t be cheap.

Once Colt ships us a large package containing many rods for testing, we’ll let you know how their revolutionary concept holds up.

See you in science class, Tom Chandler.

UPDATE: A couple people have suggested (via social media channels) that I’m exposing something here. In truth, I find the technology and rods pretty interesting, though I have to admit to finding the “revolutionary” tagline a trifle amusing.Â Good luck to Colt…

It’s Friday, which means I’m on Little M duty – and that a quick fly fishing trip may be in the cards.

Then again, it’s August, and a lot of our small streams are hunkered down under the double whammy of summer heat and low summer flows, so a Fishability Reconnaissance Trip – cleverly disguised as a Little M nature outing – is probably the smartest course.

That means hiking books instead of wading boots, and a stream thermometer in place of a fly rod.

Frankly, I’m congratulating myself even as I write this; maintaining the pretense of effective fatherhood while indulging your fly fishing affliction requires both creativity and an ability to seize the moment.

Carpe Kidum…

The Rod Builder Cometh

Also included in today’s Big Day Out may be a visit to bamboo rod builder Chris Raine’s shop. Raine called yesterday to say he’d worked out the kinks on a new taper, and wanted me to cast it.

My motivation here is clear; Chris gave me the prototype of this taper years ago, and the thing has never really clicked for either of us.

If he has solved the riddle, then a new tip could bring my Raine Frankenrod (it’s a builder’s shop rod – a prototype built from disparate sections and using mismatched components) up to speed.

Only a fool wouldn’t make that visit, and the Underground’s no fool.

That I’d be fishing a hollowbuilt bamboo fly rod that clearly wasn’t meant for public consumption only makes the whole thing more attractive (and probably to a sizable portion of my readership).

After all, good bamboo rod builders create little works of art pretty much all day long; fishing a rod that ignores cosmetic conventions in favor of proving a concept turns me all warm and tingly inside.

It’s not normal, but then, normalcy isn’t really the default state for a group of people who go to great lengths to catch fish only to safely return them to the water.

And The Undergrounders Are Headed [insert fly fishing destination] This Weekend?

It’s mid-August and Friday is here; where are the Undergrounders fishing this weekend?

Writers hold a reverence for typewriters similar to the reverence fly fishermen have for antique fly tackle; you don’t necessarily have to use the stuff to fall in love with it.

My first writing projects were pounded out on a typewriter (is GeezerWriter.com available?), and while my 70s electric was hardly an antique, I’m like most writers – I still get goose bumps when I see an old typewriter.

It’s akin to the feeling a lot of fly fishermen get when they see that familiar, wheat colored flash of a bamboo fly rod.

For those with a penchant for the machines that writers formerly used to put words to paper, the lovingly photographed antiquetypewriters.com site represents the motherload.

In an era when novels are being written on cell phones, big, clunky typewriters have undergone a transformation.

In simple terms, they no longer bear the burden of functioning as useful tools.

They’ve become little mechanical works of art.

While I wouldn’t trade my out-of-control text processor addiction for a typewriter (I can stop any time I want), I admit writing’s current “fire hose” approach to productivity lacks the elegance of thinking first, and writing second.

Then again, I’m not wholly blinded by the nostalgia of these things. After all, writers have a reputation for hitting the bottle pretty hard – a trait I once suggested was the result of typewriter use in the pre Liquid Paper/self-correcting ribbon era.

The Rod ‘O Rama is a fly fishing staple – an afternoon where pretty much every fly rod you own ends up leaning against something in the back yard, lines strung, loops formed, actions evaluated.

A stack of fly rods leaning against the rail - the inevitable result of a Rod 'O Rama

Naturally, a good Rod ‘O Rama involves more than one person, and in extreme circumstances, disagreements over rod action or desirability may be settled with dueling pistols.

Mostly, a simple “you’re a clueless bastard” is enough.

During a really epic Rod ‘O Rama, you can dig out rods you haven’t seen in years (I don’t want to own any rods I haven’t fished in years, but have to admit I do), and – in rare instances – you may unearth fly rods you forgot you owned.

In this case, I found two rods I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen before, though I finally solved the mystery on one.

It was a Raine bamboo rod tube containing a butt and mid, but – puzzlingly – no tips.

It was a model I’d never owned, but realized later he’d grabbed it out of his shop by accident when we went fishing last fall, borrowed my spare rod that day, and then forgot to retrieve the tube from my truck.

I’m wondering what a reasonable ransom looks like.

The Theme of The Day: 6 WTs

A Rod ‘O Rama theme is useful, and in this instance, Older Bro was loooking for a 6wt, which means he got to cast everything from an decades-old Orvis Superfine 6wt to sweet 14 year-old Sage DS – right up to Raine’s saltwater 6wt and the high-tech Orvis Hydros that replaced my much-missed Zero Gravity.

Initially, you try to limit the madness to one type of rod, but eventually the words “if you like that, you’ll love my XXXX” are heard, and suddenly, you’re casting four and five weights too.

Before it’s over, you’ve got everything from a 60 year-old Phillipson to a two-month-old graphite leaning against the rail – every one of which is loaded with some kind of memory.

You find yourself ankle-deep in the snow still covering the yard, false casting a fly rod, adjusting the loop size, and the memory of a rainy day on a lake washes over you.

You may or may not remember how cold and wet you were, but you do remember dropping the rod in the shallow water because you were holding a 17″ rainbow, and that its strawberry lateral line lit up the rainy, monochromatic, steel-grey environment you’d come to accept as normal.

Later, I found myself casting a 7.5′ 5wt Fenwick glass rod – the factory equivalent to my first fly rod, one I built in the mid-70s from a blank.

While the original rod met its end in a Santa Clara garage, the replacement feels similar enough that casting it reminded me of the bluegills and crappie I caught from a muddy, weedy lake better than 30 years ago.

Putting Them Away… Sorta

Ultimately, Older Bro’ found a rod he liked, and since I had a similar rod, sent him home with it.

Yet, when I put all the rod tubes away, I noticed a few – like the Fenwick – ended up a little closer to the front of the pile.

It’s not spring yet – there’s still snow on the ground and the alpine trails are months away from opening – but we’re seeing the signs.

The blue jays who nest under the front eaves came back today, and temperatures could run into the upper 50s all week.

So while I can’t fish the small streams yet (not legally), I can set aside a few rods that haven’t been fished in a while, and imagine creating new memories with them over the coming season.

The bugs had just started and a few trout were rising, and it was suddenly very clear I’d spent most of my summer fly fishing small streams.

Well, somebody caught something. It just wasn't me...

Fishing a small stream is gratifying, but it’s not the best preparation for throwing #22 emergers at very spooky trout – which tend to stop rising whenever you wade closer than 35′.

In other words, I was rusty.

Rusty enough that I got a little cranky with myself on the water.

That’s a bad thing, because when I’m cranky, I start cataloging my fly fishing failures, and under the impetus of an admittedly self-critical nature, that list can grow very long.

Wrong flies. Out of 6x. Every cast eight inches short. Not sneaky enough. Not piling enough tippet for a good drift. Not focused. Bad karma from prior lifetime.

It can get a little weighty at a moment in your life when a little confidence is a real asset.

The Code

Sometimes, you never do crack the code, and the bugs stop appearing and the fish stop rising, and you stand hip-deep in seriously freezing cold water and wonder why you took up this sport in the first place.

Other times you change one simple thing: tippet, fly, more reach in the cast – and the whole experience resolves itself right in front of your eyes, and the trout do their part by eating the fly.

It’s either the way things are supposed to work, or pure magic.

When that does happen, you tend to forget the first half hour or so; that stretch where some apparently immature fly fisherman would be tempted to imitate his new daughter by stamping his wading boots and whining.

(Thank goodness that doesn’t apply to you or me.)

In this case, I sorta cracked it. Barely.

Well, not really.

I was able to get fish to eat, though before it all came together, I had one actually come up under my bug while aiming for the natural right behind it.

My simply too-big #18 parachute simply slid off his broad back, and I simply stood there wondering at the unfairness of it all.

The answer, of course, is that fairness isn’t a concept often adhered to in nature, and it wasn’t the trout’s fault I was stinking the place up.

The Ugly Reality

Chris Raine – who was ironically fishing my backup rod (an 8.5′ Raine prototype) because he’d grabbed the wrong rod tube on the way out of the shop – landed two nice fish.

Sure, his fish, but MY fly rod. I claim at least half of the trout's 15 inches

Naturally, I claimed ownership of half of both trout, suggesting it was a fool’s tax for grabbing the wrong rod (an obvious symptom of advancing age).

Just as naturally, he replied with a rude gesture.

I fished an 8.5′ Jim Reams hollowbuilt (a rod I love dearly for its smooth nature, but may sell because I’m not nearly caster enough to enjoy the taper when the bugs are on the water and I get impatient and start driving casts).

I had a total of four grabs, one brief hookup, one driven-by-frustration hookset (broke him off), and missed the other two on general principle.

In other words, I kinda sucked, and because I was preoccupied with rising fish, I can’t even save this fishing report with a handful of good pictures.

It was the kind of day that shows you brief flashes of promise, yet reminds you that you’re not nearly as good at this (or most other things) as your daydreams suggest you are.

Or more accurately, I’m not always as good at this as I was on the one day I did it all perfectly – a day which somehow becomes our benchmark for normalcy, which is self-deception raised to a high art.

While I’ll eventually adjust to the demands of the BWO hatch (I’m stocking up on #20 Roy Palm biot-bodied soft hackle emergers), I’ll also embrace the concept of letting the trout win the day without assuming I’ve lost my marbles.

Do McGuane, Leeson or Gierach have one of these? Are their words flowing organically from its smooth, limber, almost sensuous keys? Or are they stuck writing on stiff, unyielding, too-fast, unnatural synthetic keyboards, their sentences short, quick, efficient – but lacking connection to the primal life force that beats within all of us?

Are they – to put it bluntly – simply muddling by on sheer talent?

Sure, plastic keyboards are great at pumping out words all fast and easy. And yeah, they’re light, so you can type on them all day. But for the sheer joy of writing, nothing compares to bamboo, and if you doubt that for even a second, I can scare up a couple hundred people who will state – in definitive terms (some using physics diagrams as a visual aid) – that bamboo users simply write better.

Emboldened by the varnished, straight-grained goodness beneath my fingers, I’m going a step further, suggesting I might even be better human being than the huddled plastic masses, most of whom probably deserve the carpal tunnel they’re developing from their synthetic keyboards.

Clearly, the scales have simultaneously fallen from my eyes and tipped in my favor. (See what I did there? The bamboo’s already working its magic.)

One day, the world will look back at this moment with reverence, correctly seeing it as a turning point in the literature of fly fishing the world, when the most organic, smooth, flowing writer the world universe had ever seen typed the immortal words: